When the most romantic of cow outfits, the British-owned Matador, shipped out from Texas with 3,000 head of cattle bound for Dakota and the Cheyenne Indian Reservation, an observant young bronc twister named Ike Blasingame rode with them. Dakota Cowboy-which the New York Times calls "warm, human, flavorful"-is the story of Ike's eight years (1904-1912) on the last of the great open ranges. Its pages "take the reader across the treacherous Missouri as the spring-softened ice goes out under the horses' feet, into the still wild cow towns, through the roundups, the prairie fires, and to the...